The shadowy Islamist group that was all but destroyed in the 1980s is ruining the uprising against Bashar al-Assad.

MARCH 13, 2013

BY Hassan Hassan

No
one in Syria expected the anti-regime uprising to last this long or be this
deadly, but after around 70,000 dead, 1
million refugees, and two years of unrest, there is still no end in
sight. While President Bashar al-Assad's brutal response is mostly to blame,
the opposition's chronic failure to form a viable front against the regime has
also allowed the conflict to drag on. And there's one anti-Assad group that is
largely responsible for this dismal state of affairs: Syria's Muslim
Brotherhood.

Throughout
the Syrian uprising, I have had discussions with opposition figures, activists,
and foreign diplomats about how the Brotherhood has built influence within the
emerging opposition forces. It has been a dizzying rise for the Islamist
movement. It was massacred out of existence in the 1980s after the Baathist
regime put down a Brotherhood-led uprising in Hama. Since then, membership in
the Brotherhood has been an offense punishable by death in Syria, and the group
saw its presence on the ground wither to almost nothing. But since the uprising
erupted on March 15, 2011, the Brotherhood has moved adroitly to seize the
reins of power of the opposition's political and military factions.

According
to a figure present at the
first conference to organize Syria's political opposition, held
in Antalya, Turkey, in May 2011, the Brotherhood was initially hesitant to join
an anti-Assad political body. The group had officially
suspended its opposition to the Baathist regime in the wake of
the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in 2009, and it pulled out of an alliance with Abdul
Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian vice president who defected in 2005.

The
Brotherhood nonetheless sent members to participate in the conference,
including Molhem Droubi, who became a member of the conference's executive bureau. Meanwhile, it took steps to form fighting groups inside Syria,
recruiting potential fighters and calling on its relatively meager contacts on
the ground in Homs, Hama, Idlib, and Aleppo.

As
the idea of a unified opposition group to lead the popular revolt gained momentum,
the Brotherhood became more involved. A month after the meeting in Antalya, it
organized a conference in Brussels, attended by 200 people, mostly Islamists --
one of the first obvious fractures in the unity of the opposition. The
Brotherhood subsequently organized several conferences that formed opposition
groups to serve as fronts for the movement, allowing it to beef up its presence
in political bodies.

After
the conference in Brussels, at least three groups were
formed "to support the Syrian revolution." The organizations
continued to hatch, and a few months after the first conference they were
present in opposition bodies that later formed the core of the Syrian National
Council (SNC), an umbrella group that ostensibly represented all anti-Assad
forces. The council set aside seats for both the Brotherhood and members of the
Damascus Declaration, a group of Syrian reformists established in 2005 --
but the Brotherhood already had a significant presence within the Damascus
Declaration group.

That
appears to be a common pattern. According to members of the Syrian National
Coalition who were integral to the early opposition meetings, as well as
activists close to the Brotherhood, groups that have served as fronts for the
Brotherhood include: the National Union of Free Syria Students, led by Hassan
Darwish; the Levant Ulema League; the Independent Islamic Democratic Current,
led by Ghassan Najjar; the Syrian Ulema League, led by Mohammed Farouq Battal;
the Civil Society Organizations' Union, a bloc of 40 Brotherhood-affiliated groups;
the Syrian Arab Tribal Council, led by Salem
Al Moslet and Abdulilah Mulhim; the Revolution Council for
Aleppo and Its Countryside, led by AhmedRamadan; the Body for Protection of Civilians, led by Natheer Hakim; the
National Work Front, led by Ramadan and Obeida Nahas; the Kurdish Work Front,
led by Hussain Abdulhadi; the Syrian Revolution Facebook page, which decides
the names for Friday's protests; the Hama Revolution Gathering; the National
Coalition for Civilian Protection, led by Haitham Rahma; and the Syrian Society
for Humanitarian Relief, founded by Hamdi Othman.

Other
groups that represent outlets for the Brotherhood but are not themselves
represented in political bodies include the Arab Orient Center for Strategic and Civilization Studies, headed by Brotherhood
spokesman Zoheir Salem, and the Syrian Human Rights
Committee, led by Brotherhood representative and the opposition's ambassador to
Britain Walid Saffour. A group representing women and children is also led by a
daughter of Mohammed Farouk Tayfour, the deputy leader of Syria's Brotherhood.

Additionally, some
Brotherhood-affiliated figures denied they were part of the group and
joined the SNC as "independents." These include Nahas, the London-based director
of the Levant Center; Louay Safi, a Syrian-American fellow at Georgetown
University and former chairman of the Syrian American Council (SAC); and Najib
Ghadbian, a political science professor who also works at the SAC.

The
Brotherhood's political dominationbecame
more pronounced in late September 2011, when opposition figures and forces met
in two separate hotels in Turkey toform
a political body representing all opposition forces. In an early sign of its organizational skill, the Brotherhood divided itself into two groups, one in each
hotel, to influence both sides of how the body was to be shaped: The Brotherhood's
leader, Riad al-Shaqfa, was in one hotel while his deputies, Tayfour
and Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni, were in the other. Droubi shuttled back and
forth. The strategy paid off: A list of agreed-upon members was altered in one
of the hotels, and more Brotherhood members and Brotherhood-affiliated groups
were added before the creation of the SNC was announced on Oct. 2.

By
the winter of 2011, the Brotherhood had greatly expanded its influence. It was
not only strong in the SNC -- it had won supporters within the ranks of military
defectors and the Local Coordination Committees inside Syria. Before the September
conference, around 100 young activists traveled to Turkey, where the
Brotherhood gave them media training and provided them with equipment. When the
trainees returned toSyria, according to one of the organizers of
the opposition meetings,they formed
coordinating committees in dozens of small towns and cities to support the
movement.

Brotherhood
members also met with early defectors from the regime's army. As one military
defector told me, the Brotherhood asked for their loyalty, and in return, the group
promised to pressure Turkey to create a buffer zone along its border with Syria. The
effort was unsuccessful, but the Brotherhood later won the loyalty of Col.
Riad al-Asaad, who formed
the Free Syrian Army (FSA), replacing the secular-leaning Free Officers
Movement.

After
the formation of the FSA, new brigades began to take religious names, instead
of names of national figures or areas. The Brotherhood's influence within the
FSA was known to military defectors at the time -- that was why the first Druze
officer to defect from the army, Lt. Khaldoun Sami Zaineddin,
took the unusual step of joining the Free Officers Movement in October 2011, rather than
the FSA.

The
Brotherhood continued to pour time and resources into building its influence
within the rebel forces. The fighting factions backed by the movement include
the Tawhid Brigade, supported by Brotherhood leaders in Aleppo, mainly
Bayanouni and Ramadan; some elements in the powerful Farouq Brigades; the Body
for Protection of Civilians, considered the military wing of the Brotherhood,
led by Hakim; and Ansar al-Islam, based in Damascus and the surrounding
countryside. The Brotherhood has brigades across the country whose names
typically include the word "shield," such as the Euphrates Shield, the Capital
Shield, and the Aqsa Mosque Shield. It also coordinates in some areas with hard-line
groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar Al-Sham, according to military defectors.

Most
importantly, the Brotherhood has successfully opposed attempts to outline how
the transitional period will be managed -- an ambiguity the group no doubt
hopes it will be able to exploit to seize a leadership role after Assad's fall.
In June 2012, a major meeting was
organized in Istanbul by the Arab League to restructure the SNC, and U.S.
Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford told the opposition that the council must subject itself
to an independent committee that would lay out internal reforms if it hoped to
win greater American support. The committee met in Cairo in July 2011 and presented draft
documents that outlined the transitional period, laying out the
duties of opposition forces and detailing the fate of armed factions. They also
included an important article criminalizing the use of political money to buy
loyalty.

The
documents, which were eventually signed by the bulk of opposition forces, dealt
a heavy blow to the Brotherhood's monopoly on power. The Islamist group moved
quickly to prevent any restrictions on its ability to shape the post-Assad
political order. According to members who attended the
meeting, the SNC did not sanction a follow-up committee to ensure the documents
were incorporated into the opposition's vision, despite pressure from outside
countries. The Brotherhood dealt a final blow to the plan when it succeeded in
having the plan excluded from the founding
statements of the Syrian National Coalition, established in Doha in
November 2012.

The
Brotherhood additionally benefited from its influence in Turkey, Qatar, and
Egypt. Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned satellite behemoth, has polished
the image of anti-regime Islamists in its coverage. The
Brotherhood also carefully selected leaders who can be easily controlled or
who have minimal leadership skills. According to a member of the opposition
coalition, it supported the appointment of the Syrian National Coalition's current leader, Moaz al-Khatib,
because it thought he could be easily steered as he was a "good-hearted mosque
preacher."

Khatib
has proved that the Brotherhood underestimated him by unshackling himself from
its control, unilaterally announcing a brave initiative for dialogue with the
regime. For his defiance, he has since been subject to fierce
attacks from the Brotherhood and its allies: The SNC criticized
Khatib for "taking personal decisions," while the Brotherhood itself rejected the
initiative as "undisciplined and inadequate."

The Muslim Brotherhood knows it has a long way to go before taking control of Syria. But its power grabs have already played a major role in perpetuating the current crisis, and they bode ill for its role in the new Syria.

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